Sheldon Johnson Remembers the Dinosaur Site and the Farm History

Sheldon Johnson Remembers the Dinosaur Site and the Farm History

Written August 2002 at the Request of

Kerry Bate, Director of Community Development,

State of Utah Division of Community and Economic Development

We bought the land that belonged to Ellis Wilson. I knew Ellis Wilson when I was a boy. He and his brother Kilburn cut trees down and logged for my dad at Dad’s Tropic saw mill in East Fork. He and his brother would contract out for logging. They were good men and hard workers.

Ellis married a Nelson lady from Kanab and they moved to St. George around the 1940’s sometime. Eventually they had a fine family of twelve children.

Ellis’ son tells me this story:

“Kilburn and Ellis split the profits from their labors. Kilburn didn’t have children, and he felt guilty because he had money in his checking account and Ellis was spending all his money on his large family. So Kilburn invited Ellis to write checks on his account when he needed it for his children.

“Ellis found this 100 acres at a tax sale, and found it so exciting that he wrote a check for the farm right then. He wrote it out of Kilburn’s account.... at his invitation, sort of. Wow! Kilburn and Ellis had to work like crazy to make this checking account fill the measure of his creation. There was some discussion about that check. This farm had an exciting beginning.”

When our five sons were old enough to work I knew I had to find a project for them to work with and learn. I guess it was about 1960. Looking around, trying to find a spot where we could create a farm from our own labor, I found Ellis accumulated over one hundred acres of land along the river that had water rights that hadn’t been proved up on. So I went to Ellis and asked if he would sell me some land.

Ellis had been working for years trying to prove up on the water right, but did not have the financial backing to get the right equipment to level the ground and use the water.

Ellis had owned some property east of St. George and had one time had a contract with J&J to build a dam in the river. On completion he would deed them a block of city ground. The dam was constructed, but the floods came and destroyed it all before the forms were even off the cement. It was not constructed on solid ground and the waters dug beneath the dam and totally destroyed it.

This caused Ellis to become so discouraged that he decided to sell the whole farm for $22,500.00. He had never even had it surveyed, but it was about 122 acres. There were no roads to get into it. It was outside the city of St. George city limits, and had no access.

He stood on the ground and waved his hand in general directions, saying, “I think it goes from over there to about over there.”

We agreed on the sale, but before we could sign our contract Ellis died of a heart attack. After some time I went to his widow and asked if she still wanted to sell. She said she certainly did. She needed to send her sons on missions.

In the meantime, the court had an appraisal done, and they valued the land at $13,000.00. Leatrice and I agreed to pay Mrs. Wilson $25,000.00 which was the price her husband and I had discussed. I made this offer on the condition that I could pay $2,500.00 down and the balance at $150.00 a month at 6% interest. She agreed, and a contract was made.

She needed the money badly. We didn’t have much money either, to tell the truth, but with careful management and family sacrifices we thought we could do it. We had to keep our noses to the grindstone to pay $150 a month those early years, but that was good for all of us.

To square up the property for a hay field we later bought eighteen acres from Rulon Foster and six acres from Tone Foremaster.

The land where dinosaur tracks were found was just over the line on the Rulon Foster property, but within one hundred feet of the Wilson property. The larger hill south of the site and most of the rest of my farm was from the Wilsons. If the Wilsons had not sold me the farm I never would have made the dinosaur discovery.

Ellis Wilson was a hard working, straightforward man. He worked hard at whatever he did. He wasn’t able to water his farm, but still the farm served his large family well after he died. His children were bright, good students, solid citizens, great people. Mrs. Wilson told me that the $150 a month sent to her over about eighteen years sent most of her children on missions, including one of the girls. Ellis Wilson left a great legacy.

Our contract became a huge blessing to the Wilsons and a huge blessing to the Johnsons. We developed a sixty five acre alfalfa field and our fine boys learned to work and struggle. The money they earned was enough to pay, each of them, for their college education, except for Layne who has Down syndrome. It was probably more important to Layne than any of them.

On the farm he learned attributes of independence, physical skills, how to drive, how to think independently. He was forced to make judgments, decisions, and he learned that he belonged along side his hard working brothers.

He married in the temple eight years ago, has been a licensed driver for the past twelve years, and has worked at Penny’s for nearly thirty years. He started when he was seventeen and he is forty seven now.

Blessings come in many disguises. He used to drive the scat to load and haul dirt when we were building the irrigation ponds. He learned you could do big things if you did just a little bit at a time and never quit.

Wherever you roamed as a boy over those hills, Kerry, you were tracking dinosaurs. There were no fences to tell you where one property ended and another began. The surveys had not been done in those early years, as I said. When I started to drill some wells later we had to have surveys done to make sure it was on our property.

When it came time to water the fields we had cleared, I went to Clint Snow, president of Dixie State Bank, to get money to put a sprinkler system on the farm.

“I like you, Sheldon, so I am going to turn you down,” he said. “That is the dumbest purchase you could have ever made, and I am not going to help you put good money after bad. That’s Cooper’s Bottoms down there, where the pioneers came when St. George was first settled. They couldn’t get water out of the river and neither can you. That property will never be worth a dime.”

So I went to another bank and mortgaged our home to get $9,000 to buy a sprinkler system and the pump. The State Water Engineer only gave me an eighteen month extension to prove up on the water right Ellis had struggled to prove up on.

The rough unleveled, rutted land was covered with mesquite trees, sage brush, cactus, salt bush, and tamarisk. We worked like crazy that first eighteen months to clear and level as much land as possible to make it productive land.

The water right was for 120 acres. In eighteen months we had 65 acres in crops, and that was how much approved water rights we were able to retain. That was as much as we could clear and plant in that short time.

In my life I really believe someone has guided me, because it wasn’t really that easy, but somehow I just had to do it.

In my perspective now I am amazed. Father of five young boys, busy with a full day’s work with my optometric practice, active in my church--a bishop of a ward, serving on the Washington County School Board, active in local service clubs---and we took on a 65 acre farm? Barren, tamarisk, sagebrush, and mesquite covered rough ground? How was that possible?

Everyone in the family helped, including my wife Leatrice. We did a little bit at a time every day, moving forward even when it looked impossible.

Besides, we didn’t know anything about farming. I was raised working hard at Dad’s lumber mill, and had no experience as a farmer. So, I went to talk to local farmers. They resented me like crazy--a city boy who thought he could farm? They wouldn’t tell me a thing.

I finally found one guy, Richard Shurtliff. He would give me advice, counsel. We sometimes even shared equipment. He even lent me a mower one time.

Farmers resent professional office workers pretending to be farmers. But after a few years they saw I really did do the farm work--I didn’t hire it done. We did it, my boys, my wife and I. So, we were finally accepted.